Thoughts & Realizations

I can't think of much, I haven't much to say. Oh who am I kidding.

I can only remember things of years past that I've experienced in my lifetime. My lifetime is my frame of reference for my world view, for every curiosity, for every maddening puzzle, for everything that rudely reminds me that not everything can be as I believe in my heart it should be.

My frame of reference For This.

During my lifetime many people have given their lives for various causes, many of them without being given a choice. I've seen this.

Two examples come to mind.

So many first responders and innocent victims fell with the twin towers. This was when my son, now a young man, was a little over one year old. The personification of innocence, rolling around like a bundle of sausages in a Graco Pack'N'Play at Grandma and Grandpa's house in Bellmore, Long Island, while I wept.

...and it was like, "Has the world gone mad? How can we possibly recover from this?"

Throughout (basically) my young adult life thousands of people, so many of them gay men, lost their lives because of AIDS. The struggle to care for them, as well as the (hopelessly disheartening) struggle to eradicate the disease itself, left many casualties in its wake.

It was like the screams of the dying could not be heard. That the dying, stigmatized, knew no champion.

...and it was like, "Has the world gone mad? How can we possibly recover from this?"

You may think, this isn't like that, this is far worse. This cannot be compared -- but I think it can. It's that thing that's so shockingly out of our control. It's that thing that acts as blunt force trauma upside the head; the wakeup call that reminds us of a simple fact we always forget, a simple fact and we can only overcome it if we remember it:

"People actually hate me."

Of course, I must spend my entire life fighting this fact and work like the dickens to overcome that hatred. But I must also learn to accept it. People hate me, and more often than not, I just can't do anything about it. They hate me, I hate them, they hate me, I hate them. Not acknowledging that this is fundamentally part of the definition of the world is not smart.

Hindsight can give us strength at times like these. Going to what seemed like a never ending parade of memorial services for stricken men in their prime made life often feel unbearable in the 90s, and yes, many gave their lives, but we got through it. We laughed when it was appropriate (and actually sometimes when it wasn't), we cheered each other on and, boy did we make some stunning art inspired by it, art that comforted the countryside as if it was the biggest quilt you ever saw.

Once turned into a veritable (literal?) ghost town after that incredible day, TriBeCa and the lower tip of Manhattan now show little indication of the horrors that occurred there fifteen years ago -- save the magnificent monuments we erected which honor the memory of that event and its victims. Again, the art that was created to honor and attempt to explain this National Tragedy is a profound time capsule which will lend eternal context for what happened on that day to anyone who encounters it.

We now live in an apartment just south of Ground Zero in what was the shadow of the World Trade Center. The revitalization of the area reminds me every day just how we as a Community and a nation actually got through that. Are getting through that. How we overcame it and how we can move on from it to other things. Other things that might seem even worse today.

Tonight, sending my sixteen year old Jackson to bed, I was deeply ashamed I could not have offered him a better world. I realize now this is what haunts me the most about all this -- the feeling of failure as a torch-passer. I saw the disillusionment and sadness and nervousness in his eyes and I will never forgive that abhorrent individual responsible for the furrow in his brow. My lack of helpful or comforting words probably resonated like a sort of Tough Love: "Well, there's gonna be a lot of work to do now for the young people of your generation. You have inherited this, and you will have to work hard to make the world a better place."

He nodded, and that spoke volumes to me. He already knew this, and he was not shirking from it. When I saw that this landed within him, I was of course so proud, but I was also comforted. A father's first tiny glimpse of the proverbial role reversal. Thank Goodness. He knows. He understands. Somehow I am less afraid.

I am profoundly sad tonight, but I know everything will be all right. We will figure out how to make it so. We have before. We will do it again. We must.

...and oh yeah, the art is gonnabe off the chain.